After a long year of traveling for the company, you deserve a little down time around the holidays. Because in the new year you'll be starting it all up, all over again.
Did last year's travel blow out your budget, your peace of mind or your waistline? Here are 12 tips to keep in mind throughout the coming year.
This year, resolve to:
- Use Your Memberships. Your AAA membership, Best Western Gold Rewards and other club cards can save you big bucks if you use them often. Pick and choose which cards will be the most useful to you and concentrate on those to really rack up the points.
- Use Your Miles. In many increasingly frequent instances, it's a "use them or lose" them mentality. How's that for a slap in the face?
- Save Your Travel Receipts. Sometimes it's easy to forget to grab every opportunity to prove to the IRS that your business costs money to run.
- Eat Healthy Meals when traveling. It's easy to grab fast food, but your quality of life won't improve. Make a real effort to eat more fresh fruits and vegetables, leaner meats and fish, and cut out the starch wherever you can.
- Use the Fitness Centers and swimming pools in hotels, jog around the parking lot during the day, or try to work out in your room. Do dips between a desk and chair, try situps and pushups from a clean bath towel on your hotel room floor, and attempt a few isometrics in the bathroom door frame. Don't forget to stretch. You can also jog in place while watching TV in the privacy of your room. Close the drapes first so you don't feel goofy.
- Travel Safer. Be more aware in your hotel room, in parking lots, and even at coffeeshops.
- Use your Gadgets well. You bought them, now resolve to use them. GPS units can be a constant traveler's best friend - don't leave home without them. New peripherals and cool electronic toys that sit in boxes are surely lonely. Put them through their paces. Don't forget all the cool things you can do with an average cell phone.
- Avoid Germs on Planes. If you gotta fly, try these tips to conquer nasty flu bugs.
- Keep Your Laptop Clean. Regularly clean your cache, defrag the hard drive, purge unnecessary programs, empty the trash and update your virus protection systems.
- Prevent Identity Theft - shred your papers and keep an eye on those all-crucial credit reports. At the very least, order your free annual reports from Experian, Equifax and Transunion every year.
- Take that Vacation. Pace yourself. You can't just work all day, every day, and not see everything you hold dear fall apart (things like your family, your health and your sanity). What restores your soul? Try sleeping in a hammock on a Thai beach, go skiing in Aspen, charter a cruise to the Channel Islands or cycle the wineries of southern France. The world is your oyster. Go somewhere your cell phone won't ring.
The copyright of the article 12 Business Travel Resolutions in Business Travel Tips is owned by Dan Florio. Permission to republish 12 Business Travel Resolutions in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
